


Signs of Weakness

by SeaSpectre160



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Lewis Snart's A+ Parenting, Past Child Abuse, Pre-Relationship, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 07:17:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6694822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaSpectre160/pseuds/SeaSpectre160
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard learns the hard way not to go swimming in a Siberian river (not that it was his idea in the first place), and Sara teaches him it's okay to let others take care of him once in a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signs of Weakness

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this isn't the first Legends of Tomorrow fic I've posted, but it's the first one I started writing. I'm a die-hard Captain Canary shipper, and proud of it. This takes place between 'Left Behind' and 'Progeny', as if they didn't go straight to 2147. So they know Mick=Chronos, but he spends this whole fic in the brig and is a non-factor.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don't own Legends of Tomorrow or any of its characters, or any other characters in the Arrowverse. They all belong to DC Comics.

SIBERIA  
1941

In the end, he doesn’t know whether he’s pissed off at Raymond for causing this whole mess or grudgingly grateful. He settles for a mixture of both, but swears that he’s _never_ going back to Russia, in _any_ time period.

It had all started with a simple recon mission around a Soviet WWII prison camp in the middle of the Siberian wilderness that may or may not be connected to Savage. While he had to admit that Mick had never been the best at stealth, he’d been a lot less annoying than the chatty billionaire in the flying battle suit. He wished he had no idea _why_ Rip insisted on pairing the two of them up, but it obviously had something to do with the fact that they’d caught Raymond and Kendra sucking face after retrieving Sara from Nanda Parbat. Apparently Rip hadn’t, until then, clued in to the fact that they’d hooked up after the space pirate incident and that there hadn’t been a lot of acting involved when they’d played husband and wife in 1958. Leonard himself didn’t trust the new couple to not get distracted by each other while on a mission. So they’d been split up, and Sara, his second choice to have his back after Mick, was with Kendra on the west side of the area in which the camp was supposedly located, while Leonard was stuck with Raymond on the south side.

The _Waverider_ ’s fabrication room had provided them all with warm clothes, and even Leonard, who was already in the habit of wearing multiple layers to deal with the freezing temperatures his Cold Gun gave off, had grabbed a few extra and bundled up against the Siberian winter. Well, Raymond hadn’t bothered, relying on the A.T.O.M. Suit to keep him warm. After all, it had held up well enough in the cold of deep space.

That was not, however, an excuse to brag about it. Non. Stop. Or to go on and on about how he was hoping the others weren’t too cold without one of their own. Leonard was seriously contemplating using his Cold Gun to personally test the suit’s capabilities when everything went to hell.

One minute, he was alone with his irritating recon partner, the next, they were being swarmed by fur-clothed grunts wielding brand-new PPSh-41 submachine guns, emerging from what must have been hidden boltholes. Leonard growled and ducked behind a particularly large tree, shooting at anything that moved at ground level, as the Atom had taken to flying above the treeline and sniping their enemies from above. From the sound of the chatter over their communicators, the others were encountering the same issue. Rip, on the north side with Firestorm, was yelling at them to fall back.

Captain Cold wasted no time hauling ass out of there, ducking from tree to tree while icing the bastards shooting at him. He couldn’t see the Atom, but he could hear him buzzing above the tree branches.

The chase brought them to the edge of a short bluff overlooking a wide, fast-moving river cutting a path through the forest on the east side of the camp. Looking back, Leonard wished he’d taken the west side. He still wasn’t sure what had happened next; he’d heard Raymond saying something later about a bullet clipping one of the flight stabilisers. Either way, Leonard hadn’t been expecting the Atom to come spiraling down out of the sky and nearly crash into him. He ducked, but the sudden motion made his foot slip on the frosted rocks, sending him tumbling down into the frigid waters with a splash.

Leonard gasped as his head burst through the surface, arms and legs flailing to keep himself from getting pulled under again. Memories came at him, in spite of the dire situation, of Mick laughing as he tried to teach the smaller teen and his baby sister how to swim – Lewis Snart, the uncaring bastard, had been too cheap to pay for swimming lessons. He kept a death grip on his Cold Gun, unwilling to lose it, even as all his remaining strength went into keeping his head above water as the rushing current swept him along.

Movement from above caught his eye, and he spotted the bizarre, winged shape coming down from the sky. Hawkgirl let White Canary drop once she was a safe distance above the ground before flying after Cold. He thrust his free hand out once she got close enough, and she grabbed it and lifted him up with a strength you wouldn’t expect from a woman her size. It was less embarrassing than being saved by Raymond, at any rate.

When they got back to the _Waverider_ , Leonard didn’t bother to hang around and listen to Rip ranting about how they’d probably blown the element of surprise, _again_ – they’d heard the same thing in the seventies, and four thick layers of clothing did him no good when they were all completely soaked through with Siberian river water in the middle of winter. He stalked straight to his room, boots squishing all the way as he began to strip off the outermost layers while tuning out Raymond’s apologies for knocking him in. While he normally preferred his showers lukewarm at best, he turned the water up as hot as it would go to get the shivering to stop. He may have embraced the moniker of Captain Cold, but that didn’t mean he found hypothermia to be a blast. Especially not after nearly freezing to death in the engine room last week and literally freezing his own hand off a few days ago.

* * *

He knew something was wrong the next morning when he woke up with his head pounding and his chest feeling congested. An attempt to breathe resulted in a painful coughing fit. Damn. He’d caught a cold. That was a lame pun just waiting to happen, one that even he wouldn’t use.

Most people would roll over and go back to sleep, but most people didn’t grow up with a father who would beat them senseless for it. So in spite of the raging fever and bone-deep ache, he stumbled out of bed, nearly falling on his face when his feet got tangled in the blankets. Thank God no one saw that. He got dressed in his usual double layers and took a moment to steady himself against the dizzying headache before heading out to the kitchen area.

He really should have taken a look in the mirror before leaving his room, because everyone did a double-take when he walked in. He apparently looked as sick as he felt. “Snart, you okay, man?” Jax asked, looking up from his toast.

“I’m fine,” Leonard argued, internally wincing at how hoarse and distinctly _not_ fine his voice sounded.

“You don’t look fine,” Kendra commented, crossing her arms and raising one eyebrow.

“Is that four thousand years of observational skills kicking in?” he snarked back, even if he knew that was a weak comeback, especially by his standards. Raymond actually came up and tried to feel his forehead, like he was a little kid, but Leonard swatted his hand away. “What are you, my mother?” he snapped, “I don’t need your he-” He was cut off by another series of coughs that had him bracing himself against a wall to stay standing as his head spun.

A pair of smaller hands were suddenly touching him, one on his shoulder and the other feeling his forehead. Leonard went to slap those away, too, but the hand on his shoulder moved and grabbed his wrist in a firm, calloused grip. Blinking the spots out of his eyes, he saw Sara looking at him with a concerned expression. “You have a fever, Snart,” she stated, more than a hint of scolding in her tone, “You shouldn’t even be up.”

“I’m fine,” he argued, “This is nothing.” But of course his own body just had to betray him when he tried to jerk away from her. He found himself overcome with a bout of vertigo and stumbled, bumping into the wall. She caught him by the arm and held him steady.

“Med bay,” she ordered, “Let’s go.”

Leonard Snart most certainly did not do orders, but the short, blonde assassin didn’t leave him any choice in the matter as she hauled him out of the room, moving just slowly enough that he wasn’t tripping over himself trying to keep up.

By the time they got there, he was so dizzy and tired that he couldn’t even see straight, and nearly missed the bed when he tried to lie down. Sara’s amused chuckle at that was anything but helpful. It got worse when, noticing that he was shaking in spite of the fever, she got him a blanket and actually tried to put it over him. He huffed and shoved it away. “That’ll just make it worse, and I don’t need anyone tucking me in.”

Her blurry form raised her hands as if in surrender. “Fine, fine. Gideon, you got anything to get his fever down?”

Leonard saw a brief blue light that he knew to be from one of Gideon’s scans, and he was about to tell Sara that he didn’t need drugs to get through this, that he never had, but the AI interrupted him: “Judging from my scans, the best I can recommend is bed rest and two tablets of this medication every six hours.” The sound of a door unlatching opened, and now that he was laying still his vision was clearing back up enough to see Sara pulling a small bottle out of a tiny cabinet.

“I don’t recognize this,” she commented, examining the label.

“You wouldn’t. This formula was not invented until 2057. Taking two pills every six hours has a ninety-percent guarantee of eliminating the virus within thirty-six hours.”

Leonard rolled his eyes and spoke up. “I’ve done jobs in worse states, you two.” Granted, it had only been one time, in which he’d had both Mick and Lisa watching his back, and it had still gone south, but he decided to omit that for the sake of his pride.

This did nothing to dissuade Sara, however, who folded her arms and stared at him. “Please. You’re so out of it right now, I could have taken you down _before_ joining the League of Assassins. Contrary to what you may believe, we _can_ survive without you for a day. Just rest, and you’ll be back to 100% in no time.”

He scowled at the two little electric-blue pills and the glass of water she was holding out towards him, before reluctantly accepting them, downing them all in one swallow. Apparently they also worked as a damn good sleep aide, because he started drifting off seconds later.

* * *

He woke up feeling marginally less crappy than he had previously, which was definitely a good thing. Future medical technology was definitely a point in the plus column for living on this ship. Regenerating lost limbs, for example (oh, how it would have _sucked_ to go the rest of his life with only one hand). Unfortunately, another change was that he was now freezing, too much for even him to be comfortable. He spotted the blanket he’d rejected earlier, folded on a small table next to his bed, and grabbed it, clumsily covering himself as best as he could.

“What if Gideon tells someone?” Kendra’s worried voice could be heard from down the hall.

“We can just ask her not to.” Raymond, trying to reassure her of… something.

“Considering how the real owners of this ship frown on relationships of any kind, have you even considered that they might not even stock birth control?”

“Well, we won’t know unless we ask.” The med bay door swished open, and Leonard watched through eyes barely cracked open as the couple appeared in the doorway, freezing upon seeing him. “Damn it,” Ray whispered, “I thought he’d be resting in his own room.”

“Maybe he’s asleep.”

And that was a cue if he’d ever heard one. “Or maybe he can’t because you two aren’t even bothering to keep your voices down. Which is rather counter-intuitive to keeping a secret.” The pair jumped when he spoke up, their intentions becoming rather obvious when they automatically sprang apart from being practically glued to each other’s sides. Leonard opened his eyes all the way and scowled at them. “I don’t give a shit what you two get up to, just keep it behind closed doors and let me sleep.”

Mortified, the two of them practically ran out of there without even getting what they’d come in for, nearly bumping into Sara on her way in. She glanced back at their retreating forms. “What was that all about?”

“The lovebirds were in here looking for something they didn’t want anyone to know they needed.” He rolled his eyes. “Like we aren’t all adults who can’t figure it out for ourselves.”

She didn’t even blush. “At least they’ve stopped making out in the hallways like a couple of teenagers. Two years of playing husband and wife seems to have calmed them down a bit.”

Sometimes it was hard to remember that their teammates had been away from the action for two years, waiting for a rescue without knowing why they’d been left behind in the first place.

“So, you feeling any better?”

“A bit,” he admitted, as if he wasn’t still shaking and clutching the stupid blanket around himself, “Think I’m gonna go rest in my own room. I don’t need anyone else walking in and bothering me.” As he said this, he began to slowly sit up and slide off the bed.

“Okay, well, it’s been two hours, so you just need to wait four more before taking another two of these.” She picked up the little pill bottle from the bedside table and handed it to him. He paused only for a moment before accepting it. Sleeping off a cold in his own room was what he was used to, when Dad wasn’t around, though he recalled the times when Lisa was a kid and she would play nurse and try to take care of him, which usually ended up being more of a hassle than anything else.

He was insanely glad that no one was in the halls as he shuffled his way to his quarters with Sara trailing behind him. He didn’t need Kendra going all mother-hen on him (mother-hawk?), or Raymond apologising again for knocking him into that damn river. He knew the only reason they hadn’t earlier was because they’d been too embarrassed. The walk tired him out enough that he fell back to sleep within a few minutes of lying down on his bunk. He really hoped Sara didn’t tell any of the others about how she tucked him in like he was a little kid.

* * *

When he woke again, it was an hour past the time he was supposed to take his next round of pills, so the first thing he did was pop two of them and swallow them dry. Those put him out for three more hours, and by the time he woke, it was almost time for supper. He hadn’t had any breakfast, and had slept through lunch, so by now he was starving. Thankfully the meds he’d already taken had him feeling clear-headed enough to make it down to the kitchen/living room area without getting dizzy.

Everyone was already there, bickering, though no food was ready yet. They all looked up at his entrance, and the first thing Leonard noticed was that Raymond had a fresh black eye and Jax had a bandage around his wrist, poking out of his left sleeve. They had been in a fight.

“Ah, Mr. Snart,” Rip greeted him, “I trust you’re feeling better?”

Leonard pushed himself off the doorway, where he’d paused and leaned on upon entry. “Well enough.” He really was feeling better. “So, what kind of fun did you guys get up to while I was down for the count?” He didn’t miss the unhappy looks the group exchanged between each other and rolled his eyes. “Can’t you people get _one_ mission right without me?”

Sara gave him a dirty look. “We tried infiltrating the camp from another angle, but they must have some kind of underground tunnel system, which is pretty impressive considering how the ground around here is either solid rock or frozen dirt that might as well be solid rock. It would explain how they ambushed us yesterday and today, and with the element of surprise pretty much shot thanks to yesterday’s disaster, we’re running out of options.”

“Have any of you thought about just cloaking the Jump Ship and flying overhead for recon?”

“See?!” Jax exclaimed, “That’s what _I_ said!” That started another round of arguing.

Rolling his eyes again, Leonard made his way to his usual spot on the end of the couch. Mick used to sit in the middle, being the only person he was willing to allow anywhere close to his personal space at first, though Sara had eventually gained exception to that rule on occasion. Now the empty space was either left empty or filled by the blonde ex-assassin, depending entirely on his mood.

Today, she apparently deemed it safe, because she came over and sat down next to him, a glass of water in hand. Leonard took it, knowing that she – and the others – would bug him about drinking plenty of fluids, or crap like that, if he refused. His throat had been feeling dry, anyway, but he wasn’t going to admit he needed anything from them. He sat and listened as the team bickered about who would be coming on the Jump Ship and who had to stay behind, and tried not to show how tired he still was.

Kendra got up when the oven dinged; though Gideon could create food like it/she created clothes, it just didn’t taste the same as food that the team made themselves. She pulled out a tray of lasagna that smelled absolutely amazing, but for the sake of not getting too friendly with the rest of the ‘Legends’, he was never going to compliment it aloud. He did, however, shovel it down and claim having not eaten in nearly twenty-four hours as his excuse.

* * *

Sara followed him back to his room after dinner, breezing in without invitation. “So, _have_ you been feeling better, or were you saying that just to get the rest of us off your back?”

Leonard rolled his eyes, settling back into his bed and grabbing a book, since he wasn’t tired enough to sleep at the moment. “If it was the second one, it obviously didn’t work; you’re still here, aren’t you?”

She sighed, copying his eye-roll perfectly. “How is it?”

He copied her sigh, not perfectly, as it ended with a small cough. “Still tired, still have a headache, but definitely an improvement on this morning. Those little blue pills actually work.”

“You sound like you didn’t think they would.”

Leonard shrugged. “Was never much for popping pills when I got sick. I just put up with it and waited it out.”

She huffed a small laugh and leaned against the wall across from the bed. “Whenever I got sick, my mom would make sure I was confined to bed as much as possible. I’d take ten bathroom trips I didn’t even need over the course of the day because it was the only time she’d allow me to walk around. She caught on eventually, though.”

Leonard felt the corner of his mouth lift in a smirk. “Your mom sounds like the hovering type.”

“What about yours?”

Her expression froze, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, obviously realising she’d said too much.

Leonard never talked about his mother. The team knew what kind of bastard his dad had been, and they knew about his sister, but he hadn’t mentioned Mom. Nobody but Mick knew about Mom. Sara clearly didn’t mean to cross that line, but she had. Oddly, he wasn’t as upset about it as he thought he’d be.

“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“It’s okay. She… left when I was thirteen, just after Lisa was born. Before that, she was too busy trying to pay the bills to look after me, at least during the daytime. Left that to Dad because she had no choice, and you know what he was like.” He sighed. “Bastard felt he was too busy to wait on me when I got sick, so he’d send me off to school no matter what state I was in. One time I passed out during gym class. Dad had to pick me up in the middle of ‘work’, took me home, and gave me a black eye for _inconveniencing_ him. When Mom got home, he told me I’d tripped on my way to the bathroom, or something… I can’t remember what the lie was. Somehow she believed him. Never even considered that Dad might have done it himself, in spite of all the times he smacked her around. She probably planned on leaving us earlier, but then she got pregnant again, with Lisa, so I guess she decided to wait. Four months after my sister was born, she took off. Didn’t even try to take us with her.”

The silence hung between them for a while, Sara fiddling with her hair and Leonard looking down at the book in his hands without really looking at it. It had been a long time since he’d talked about his mother, and he’d never expected to talk about it with any one of the heroes on this ship, or any heroes in general. The goody-goody types tended to respond with pity; he didn’t take pity from anyone.

“You’ve never really had anyone take care of you, have you?”

The question was unexpected. He looked up at her, wondering what she was getting at.

“I mean, we all learned pretty quickly that you don’t like to accept help from anyone. You’d let Mick help you out as an equal or a subordinate, but that’s about it. You’re used to taking care of yourself and looking after your sister, but not to being on the receiving end. You think needing help from others makes you weak, because it means you can’t do it yourself. And since you’ve been surrounded your whole life by people who prey on perceived weaknesses, and are honestly one yourself, you need to show absolutely no signs of such at all times. Hence, an utter refusal to ask for help of any kind.”

Her assessment was scarily accurate. “You’ve put a lot of thought into this, haven’t you?” He put a smirk on his face. “Think about me often, Assassin?”

Sara’s face actually flushed a bit, but she had excellent control. “You’re not _that_ special, Crook. I’ve seen men like you before. Women, too. You try to do everything on your own, but eventually, you mess up, because nobody can do everything perfectly, no matter how good you are, or how hard you try.” She then crossed over to the bed and sat near his feet. “It’s okay to accept help sometimes, Leonard. Especially when you’re not at your best.”

Leonard pulled himself up into a sitting position with his back braced against the wall, considering her words. “You can’t just expect me to just change overnight,” he murmured.

“I don’t.” She reached out and gently patted his leg. Leonard blinked at the contact. “I’m just asking you to consider the possibility that you don’t have to act that way around us. We’re not going to do anything to you for not being Mr. Iceman all the time.”

He felt a corner of his mouth quirk upward at the nickname. “I don’t think Cisco Ramon would appreciate you coming up with new nicknames; he’s kind of territorial about his role.”

Sara laughed. “So I’ve heard.” She gave his leg another pat and stood up. “Well, I should probably get back to the others. They’ll be planning our next attack. Feel free to join us where you’re up to it; we could use your help.”

Leonard started to sit up, but just going and having dinner seemed to have drained him more than he’d initially realised. “Later,” he admitted, settling back down, “I think I’ll need some more sleep if I want to be able to focus.”

“Okay, then. I’ll see you when you wake up.” She began to make her way out, then paused. “If you need anything, please, ask me. Or ask Gideon to ask me.”

He’d rather ask her for help in person than have the AI broadcast it over the entire ship, but he decided not to say so and hope that it wouldn’t be necessary.

Then he got the surprise of his life (which is saying something considering the weirdness his life had been since Barry foiled his armoured truck heist over a year ago) when she doubled back and pressed her lips to his forehead. “Feel better.”

“I would if you’d put those lips here.” He tapped his own with one finger, smirking at her.

Sara gave him a flirtatious smirk of her own, easily falling back into their usual banter after that heavy conversation. “Maybe when I’m not in danger of catching anything.”

“What, you think I wouldn’t take care of you?”

“Hah. In your dreams, Crook.”

“Whatever, Assassin.”

 

THE END


End file.
